De-Mystifying the Decolonization of Palestine

Abstract

This essay reviews three contributions to a growing critical literature on Palestine political economy, pushing the analytical envelope that had prevailed for decades, powered by a ‘new wave’ of mainly Palestinian scholars. These seek to situate the struggle in a broader ‘inter-sectional’ framework (analysing the combined impacts of settler colonialism, racialism, capitalism and indigeneity, among other concepts) that identifies with, and explicitly combats for, Palestinian rights and agency. The works reviewed here falls squarely within that legacy.

KEYWORDS : :

• Settler colonialism
• neoliberalism
• Palestine
• Zionism

Notes

1 Raja Khalidi, (Summer 2016), “Bringing It All Back Home—From Beirut to Washington to Palestine Twenty-First Century Palestinian Development Studies”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XLV, No. 4.

2 I wrote my earliest treatment of this in Raja Khalidi (1988), The Arab Economy in Israel, Croom Helm, and much more literature has been added to that in the past decades.

3 Raja Khalidi and Sobhi Samour (Winter 2011), “Neoliberalism as Liberation: The Statehood Program and the Remaking of the Palestinian National Movement”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XL, No. 2.

4 My articles in: Mandy Turner and Omar Shweiki, eds, (2014), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond, Palgrave Macmillan; and Mandy Turner, ed, (2019). From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of "Peace", Lexington Books.

5 In: Raja Khalidi (2018) “Nation and Class: Generations of Palestinian Liberation”, Rethinking Marxism, 30:3, 368-392.